The man(itoba) in the machine

September 21 2002By Chris Johnston

Manitoba: "Apart from being a musician, math is the most self indulgent thing in
the world. There's no practical applications whatsoever. It's all theory, it's
all abstract. There's no responsibilities and no bottom lines."

Dan Snaith, a young Canadian who makes beguiling
electronic music as Manitoba, is also a virtuoso of maths. He's doing a PhD in
pure mathematics at the University of London. Fine. There's a logic there.
Electronica is all mathematics isn't it? The zeroes and ones. The cold sequences
of sound.

Not always. Certainly not with Snaith and Manitoba. His
acclaimed debut album of last year, Start Breaking My Heart
, was drenched in gorgeous
melody, often more like a nursery rhyme than the austere machine rhythms of his
peers. There's still disruption in his work — the clicks, cuts, bleeps and
bloops of "microhouse" or "ambient electronica" or whatever subgenre it is
deemed to fit. But he offsets these things with a degree of naivety and grace.
Using real instruments as well as digital studio tools and computers renders the
music human and even humane rather than robotic.

In this way Snaith's music
has more in common with the folksy electronica of Four Tet, Boards of Canada and
Iceland's Mum than, say, the brutality of Aphex Twin or Squarepusher.

And it
turns out that Snaith's deep interest in the outer limits of mathematics takes
similar form. He's in it for the creativity and the human aspect, he says, not
the formulae.

"The question I always get," he says, "is 'why do you do these
two things that are totally opposite — math and music?' The answer is that
people think of math as really computery or really sciencey or whatever, but I
don't really get into any of that shit at all. At the level I'm at, like, later
on, math becomes creative. It becomes like music."");document.write("

"That's right,"
says Snaith, "but all I really do is f--- around and think about things like
that and try things in different ways. Work shit out. Same way as I write
music.

"Apart from being a musician, math is the most self indulgent thing in
the world. There's no practical applications whatsoever. It's all theory, it's
all abstract. There's no responsibilities and no bottom lines."

Snaith grew up in a remote part of Canada, in Dundas,
Ontario. At age 18 he moved to Toronto. He now lives in London, but his
upbringing in "a shitty little town in the middle of nowhere" seems to infuse
much of his music. Indeed, the first track on his debut album was titled
Dundas, Ontario. On his latest EP, Give'r, he remixed that
track, added a Quicktime video and bolstered it with another track called
Tits and Ass — The Great Canadian Weekend
.

It's hard to tell
whether these tributes to his homeland are driven by affection or disdain. But
while Snaith says there was nothing to do in Dundas during his teens, and the
radio played only Skid Row and Bon Jovi, it was a hotbed of creativity —
precisely because of its cultural isolation. He learned classical and jazz
piano, then played in "shifty little indie bands" before discovering the world
of sampling and electronica.

"Living in that weird little town was amazing,"
he says. "Something about it led me on the right path. The people around me were
seriously into finding out about out-there shit. Listening to strange music or
watching strange films and looking at strange art or whatever."

Snaith has
just finished making his second Manitoba album, as yet unnamed, for release
early next year by underground London label Leaf Records. In many ways he is the
darling of the electronic community for his idiosyncratic take on the music, yet
he refuses to be either bound by the restrictions of the genre or sucked in by
the cliquey London scene that now surrounds him.

"I'm not blinded by it," he
says. "And I haven't heard any electronic music in the last year that I've
actually liked. It seems like everyone is using the same sounds. Another good
minimal electronic record … like, who cares? It's hard to believe that someone
makes that stuff, obviously with exceptions, where they think, 'Holy shit,
that's the best thing I could possibly do'. Whereas what I'm trying to do is
write songs with electronic music, not just do sounds. I want people to actually
feel something."

His forthcoming album, he says, is "full-sounding, kinda
dramatic and lush and big". He's taken his cues from "My Bloody Valentine and
Spiritualised and Mercury Rev and old psychedelic rock records and free jazz".

It is, however, constructed entirely from samples and built entirely in
Snaith's bedroom. This is the challenge as he sees it: to make electronic music,
alone, in a home-made studio, yet make it sound as infinite, as emotionally rich
and with as many stories, layers and diversions as the best organic music. To
make it, in other words, seem like it isn't electronic at all.

"You gotta have ambition," says Snaith. "It really is
the most important thing. Math, music, whatever. You gotta go for it.
You gotta try new things, otherwise you'll never find out if there
is an answer."

Manitoba brings his "turntables and laptop" live show
to The Corner Hotel on Friday September 27.